Weekly Buyer's Guide: Mid-Range System - April 2004
by Evan Lieb on April 22, 2004 7:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Memory
Recommendation: 2 X 256MB OCZ PC3200 EL (Enhanced Latency) CAS2.0Price: $134 shipped
We've talked about OCZ's troubled past and history in detail before, but thankfully, those issues have been resolved and OCZ is finally able to bring great memory to market, and has been doing so for over a year now. With that said, OCZ has had tremendous success with their EL series of modules for a reason: great price/performance ratio. At only $10 more than the Kingston ValueRAM that we recommended today, you get lower CAS timings (CAS 2-2-3 1T) with OCZ EL modules instead of high CAS timings (CAS 3-3-3 4T) with the Kingston ValueRAM modules. Lower CAS timings along with the EL series' overclocking capability translates into better performance for a great price.
Alternative: 2 X 256MB Mushkin PC3500 Level One Dual Pack (CAS2)
Price: $156 shipped (shipped together in same package)
We've recommended Mushkin's Level One memory in other Buyer's Guides due to its great performance, overclockability, and price, and that is exactly why we are recommending it in this Buyer's Guide today. However, we are recommending the 256MB versions instead of the 512MB versions that we had recommended before because this Buyer's Guide concentrates on mid-range systems where 1GB of memory (2 X 512MB) is usually overkill and where users are still fairly sensitive to price. In comparison to the recommended Basic Green modules above, a $48 price premium doesn't get you a whole lot more; basically, these modules give you an extra 33MHz (433MHz versus 400MHz) in speed and a lower latency (CAS 2-3-3 instead of CAS 2.5-4-4). You will experience a boost in speed, without any doubt, but how much depends on what programs you use. If you game a lot, the extra clock frequency and lower latencies of the Level One modules will definitely be useful. If not, you will probably not notice any difference in performance whatsoever.
Video
Recommendation: 128MB PowerColor Radeon 9600 Pro, DVI, TV-outPrice: $124 shipped
Ever since the release of the ATI R300 cores and their later iterations, ATI has either led or has had a clear lead over NVIDIA in terms of performance and price. The same is still true of ATI at the moment, a whole 18 months since the release and availability of R300 core video cards. That's why, today, we highly recommend purchasing a 9600 Pro for your mid-range system, as it offers great DX8 and good DX9 performance for the price. To put it simply, the 9600 Pro is the best bang-for-the-buck video card on the market. PowerColor makes a nice 9600 Pro for just $124 or so shipped; the additions of DVI and TV-out for this price are unique, and overall, a great deal. 2D IQ quality is excellent, up to 1600x1200 desktop resolutions with the right monitor, essentially on par with retail ATI versions of the 9600 Pro. As previously mentioned, 3D performance is excellent in DX8 games and good in DX9 games, and 128MB of memory will be plenty until more intense DX9 games are released later this year and next year.
Of course, if you're not a gamer or don't plan on playing games more than once a year, or ever, a 9600 Pro would be a pointless purchase. We would instead suggest the ATI Radeon 9200SE that we recommended last week, which goes for about $40 shipped online currently. The 9200SE provides the excellent 2D quality non-gamers need, along with reliable drivers, great online ATI customer support, and up to DX8.1 support for future Microsoft operating systems. You could always opt for the cheapest of cheap ATI cards in the Radeon 7000, but you won't be getting DX8 support, which should be the bare minimum for computer systems that plan to be used beyond the next 18-24 months, when the next operating systems release will necessitate DX8 of some form for smooth operation.
Alternative: 128MB ATI Radeon 9800 Pro, DVI, TV-out
Price: $196 shipped
ATI's 9800 Pro has been rapidly declining in price for the last several months, but only recently has its price stabilized around the $200 mark. Even with the introduction of ATI's next generation GPU (details of which you'll have later this month), we don't see the 9800 Pro dropping more than a few more dollars in retail from where it stands now for the foreseeable future. ATI's soon-to-be-released next generation GPU and the 9800 Pro's lower price are precisely why we believe that the 9800 Pro is a perfect alternative to the 9600 Pro (or even 9700 Pro) for your mid-range system. It offers good performance for tomorrow's games and boat loads of performance for the vast majority of today's games. The 128MB memory chips at their rated 3.3ns is standard these days and should fit the needs of a mid-range user. Thankfully, 2D IQ is still superb with high end retail ATI video cards like the 9800 Pro, so non-gamers have nothing to worry about in that department.
Listed below is part of our RealTime pricing engine, which lists the lowest prices available on ATI video cards from many different reputable vendors:
If you cannot find the lowest prices on the products that we've recommended on this page, it's because we don't list some of them in our RealTime pricing engine. Until we do, we suggest that you do an independent search online at the various vendors' web sites. Just pick and choose where you want to buy your products by looking for a vendor located under the "Vendor" heading.
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GoatHerderEd - Thursday, April 22, 2004 - link
some how I posted twice. interesting. sorry.GoatHerderEd - Thursday, April 22, 2004 - link
9- WTF did you just copy and paste a newegg site? You think you could have at least edited so it would not take nearly that room. And we dont need anything past the total like the shipping info and other links.GoatHerderEd - Thursday, April 22, 2004 - link
9- WTF did you just copy and paste a newegg site? You think you could have at least edited so it would not take nearly that room. And we dont need anything past the total like the shipping info and other links.Fr0zeN2 - Thursday, April 22, 2004 - link
With the recent post of AOpen's nforce2 board with an agp/pci lock that works, I was pretty confident that I'd see the a64 2800+ here somewhere. Sure the half-meg cache hurts, but it can't hurt beyond the 200mhz premium that AMD has put on the upcomin Newcastle (also with half a meg), which you can compensate for by OCing anyway. Sure, the XP 2800+ is half the price, but it's also half the performance =/jensend - Thursday, April 22, 2004 - link
7- Motherboards these days are generally good for at most one cpu generation (if they don't get cut off in the middle of the generation because newer processors with the same core require a higher bus speed).Trying to organize the guides around tasks rather than performance/budget level would be counterproductive for two reasons:
1. Half of those tasks are undemanding enough that few noticeable differences can be seen between most machines of the past 6 years.
2. In the range of machines these guides look at there are very few ways in which task-specific performance deviates from overall system performance enough to make a noticeable difference, and most of them are obvious (eg the importance of graphics cards for gaming tasks).
wolverinski - Thursday, April 22, 2004 - link
Hey DIYs,
for one thousand shipped to the door. Matching colors (beige), Antec case (two fans and 350W PS), faster performance than a nForce2/Athlon system, great overclocking potential and future HT upgrade. Don't hear much about the 865P dual channel chipset. For the price hard to beat!
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lupis42 - Thursday, April 22, 2004 - link
While I personally am a computer enthusiast, and gamer, I am also a broke student, and so I tend to try and get 18 months worth of gaming performance out of a system, and I rarely have to put out any mony for displays, kb&mouse, speakers, etc. I've so far managed to get a good track record in gaming performance by spending 1800$, once every 2 to 3 years, but my last effort was slightly mistimed, and stuff is starting to kill my current gaming rig. Ergo, I was wondering, can we get a proposed system for gamers looking to maximize their time in the sweet spot, that is, not overkill hardware when they buy it, but that remains sufficient for over a year?Also, given that I still manage email, browsing, etc with no noticable difficulty from an 800Mhz Athalon, and that the only upgrades it has recieved in its 4 year life are 256MB of RAM, and an old 4 gig HD when it's origional (40 gig) died, I wonder what might be found that could replace this system for comparable performance, but with minimal power requirements, and as little waste heat, noise, and wasted space as possible, cheaply. The need for newer and faster hardware to run MS Word on is rediculous. Why not newer more efficient hardware instead?
I seem to have made this alot longer than I intended to, so ill go ahead and throw in the gist here:
Firstly, how about giving an estimate of a guide systems usable life, and what it will be usable for across that time?
Secondly, given that the midrange system seems to be underkill for gaming even 6 months from now, and is kinda overkill for desktop work, and not designed around workstation requirements, what is it for? For that matter, the high end machine also seems to be so totally generic that it's not incredibly useful. More specialized guides might be a better handle on this issue, for example, Budget guide, Gamers guide, Overclocking guide, Multimeda guide, or something. Since I suspect that end uses have a higher impact on most Anand readers than pure performance anyway, when they go to build systems.
aerobook2002 - Thursday, April 22, 2004 - link
I suggest you include comments in your systems’ buyer’s guides regarding the system’s upgrade-ability. I personally am interested to know if the recommended motherboards will operate the next generation of CPU’s. So 2-3 years from now when the P4 EE is ~$200 instead of ~$800(?) will my mother board run it? I.E., the ASUS P4P800 Deluxe runs the P4 Northwood and Prescott but will it run the Extreme Edition or whatever is next? Dito for the AMD products (will the AN7 board run the Athlon 64 CPU?). I realize I may have to upgrade other hardware as well, like the RAM.Additionally, it would be informative to state what the systems would be best suited for, i.e. surfing & e-mail, office application, moderate gaming, video editing (what I’m interested in), etc. Or maybe you could just orient the system for a specific task i.e. video editing, gaming, office application, e-mail, etc.
I am enjoying the ‘Systems Buyers Guides” very much, keep up the good work.
skiboysteve - Thursday, April 22, 2004 - link
i concur with 5Corsairpro - Thursday, April 22, 2004 - link
#4You obviously don't have budget constraints then. To me low end is free - $400, mid is $400-1000, performance is 1000-1500, and overkill is 1500+
There are infact computer enthusiasts who are poor.